Holly's Secret Garden

Discourses everywhere:

As if we don't know how to love our mother, social media taught us the ways---Flowers, gifts, feasts make this grand day a commercialized holiday. "Buy your mother something," so said the commercials. We are hailed by the dominant discourse, inescapably, resignedly and unknowingly!  Once the Festivity drops, everyone goes back to the normal world with dear mothers standing at the kitchen sink, washing toilets, drying laundry, making bed...... 

A structuralist analysis:     

"I love you, mother!" means "I'm always forgetting you!" Always without you in my mind, acutally, mother. But this day enforces the memory of you, eliciting the sentiment of gratitude in me, which lies dormant, languid, undisturbed in the depth of my heart. The space for a mother is monotonous. The sound of a mother, while sonorous, meets a dead end. Unlike lovers' world, mother' world is full of soliloquy without passionate or due response from the other side. Love message beckons an immediate and frenzied echo; mother's message waits for time to reverberate.

Unrequited love:

Say "I love you, mother" once a year and mothers rejoice, taking on the labor for the rest of the year. Say "I hate you. mother," and mother's' heart is broken but still, she goes on loving. Hate, howerver ingrained, vanishes at the sight of her beloved's smile. What is this thing called motherly love? Unselfish yet unrequited, it nourishes the creatures growing wherein. Fertile or barren, a mother is a land capable of cultivating different crops. Yet, Mother Earth needs to know her role. She is the provider of nourishment, not the receiver and her love is never requited.

Letting go:

When boys and girls grow and develop a strong crust which mothers can’t penetrate, it’s time to let go. Let them go as further as they can without grudge or remorse, as Linda Pastan’s poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” depicts:

When I taught you

at eight to ride

a bicycle, loping along

beside you

as you wobbled away

on two round wheels,

my own mouth rounding

in surprise when you pulled

ahead down the curved

path of the park,

I kept waiting

for the thud

of your crash as I

sprinted to catch up,

while you grew

smaller, more breakable

with distance,

pumping, pumping

for your life, screaming

with laughter,

the hair flapping

behind you like a

handkerchief waving

good­-bye.

〈給要離家的女兒〉

我在你八歲
教你騎
腳踏車，邁著大步
在你身旁，
你搖搖擺擺
坐兩個圓輪而去，
我自己圓著嘴
驚見你使勁
前行，順著彎曲的
公園小徑，那時

我一直等待
那砰然一聲
你摔下來，便
衝著追上去，
而你漸行
漸遠，
漸小，漸易破損，

拼了命
踩上，踩下，尖聲
大笑，
頭髮甩動
在背後，像一方
手帕揮舞著
再見。

(彭鏡禧譯)